US:Facebook boss blasts US data spying

Confirming there was no "dragnet" for data, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg said: "I wish the government would be more proactive about communicating. We take this really seriously.”
Photo: AFP

The US government "blew it" in the row over "spying" on users of social media,
Facebook
founder and chief executive
Mark Zuckerberg
says.

"It's the government's job to protect all of us, and also to protect our freedom and protect the economy, and I think they did a bad job of balancing those things here," he said at a technology conference in San Francisco.

The US government said it was not spying on Americans – but that was not helpful to companies operating around the world, he said on Wednesday.

However, Facebook had worked really hard with the government behind the scenes to get to the point where it could release the number of requests made by the government for information about users in the past half year — 9000.

Confirming there was no "dragnet" for data, he said: "I wish the government would be more proactive about communicating. We take this really seriously."